New Melbert Lap Steel

[George Macdonald]

Just received my second 8 string Melbert lap steel made by Bob Allen. The steel is just beautiful with a red oak stain on cherry wood. This one has a new phosphor bronze bridge to enhance sustain and tone. If Bob sees this, I hope he'll add some pics. Now that I have two Melberts, I'll probably put a different tuning on the first one. However I'm most comfortable on A6th. Thanks Bob for another great steel.

[Robert Allen]

Here's the pic of your lap steel and the new bridge with the phosphor bronze rod. The new bridge with matching nut will soon be available as an option on all Melbert models.

[Jim Rossen]

Will the new bridge easily retrofit to Melberts with the black box bridge?
Thanks
Jim

[Robert Allen]

Jim, in regard to retrofitting an older Melbert lap steel with the new bridge, the point of string contact on the old style block bridge is at the edge of the block. The string contact point on the rod bridge is 1/4" back from the edge which means the new bridge would have to be mounted 1/4" closer to the pickup. First you would need to measure to see if you have 1/4" space without hitting the control mounting plate. It'll be close. Next, the holes in the new bridge are 7/8" from the front edge of the block so 4 new holes would need to be drilled 1/4" from the existing holes in the wood. The good news is that the new block will cover the old holes so they won't be visible. You bring up a good point about interchanging the parts. I'll discuss it with the machinist and perhaps make them so they can be mounted in the existing holes. However, a wider block would change the string angle over the rod so I'll need to do some experimenting to determine how it would affect the sound.

[David Mason]

Interesting. I got a used Melbert 8-string, lovely guitar, but that aluminum block was starting to sitar like crazy, and I still wanted to play western music, so:


For reasons unknown to me, the bones for acoustic guitar bridge saddles (LMII) are the same price as the bones for electric guitar nuts (takes just as long to catch the cow?), but there's enough bone in the saddles to make TWO electric nuts. SO, (why do my stories always get so long?) SO-OO, I had one around and that white thing up above is just a piece of bone I notched and snuggied up in there to just slightly lift the strings. It also shortens the scale by 1/16th of an inch, but I managed to adapt. That other white thing is just a packing-foam palm rest, I like to slightly mute the strings and it just... works, I dunno. While I was wired, I took a pix of the neighborhood too:



What you see there is the steel resting on a couple of 2x4" chunks, living above the computer keyboard with the monster loopery-everything rack to the right. The steel and the keyboard can just slide forward and back, which is why it can take eight hours to write a letter and forever to do anything else - but I can always find a steel guitar 'round here...

(The TP is for my GLASSES, when the shrapnel from vigorous playing clogs 'em up)

[Ken McDaniel]

Jim, in regard to retrofitting an older Melbert lap steel with the new bridge......

Robert, I would very much be interested in trying this modification on mine. I am pretty close to you in relative terms. I visited once and you helped me with a couple issues I had. If you plan to make these available, please let me know...

[Robert Allen]

Robert, I would very much be interested in trying this modification on mine.

PM Sent